Those who study Earth's weather have a luxury of data points to study. Compared to this, the study of space weather – including CMEs – is a much younger science, with far fewer observatories available.

On July 23, 2012, a massive cloud of solar material erupted off the sun's right side, zooming out into space. It soon passed one of NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, spacecraft, which clocked the CME as traveling between 1,800 and 2,200 miles per second as it left the sun.

In order to better understand what powers solar flares, NASA officials announced on Thursday that they were turning to the MESSENGER spacecraft orbiting Mercury in order to get a closer look at these intense bursts of radiation resulting from sunspot-related magnetic energy release.

NASA’s STEREO mission began in 2006 and has been providing scientists with images from the far side of the sun since February 2011. The spacecraft duo that were placed in orbit around the sun are now about to embark on the next phase of their mission.

A suite of Sun-gazing spacecraft, SOHO, STEREO and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), have spotted an unusual series of eruptions in which a series of fast 'puffs' force the slow ejection of a massive burst of plasma from the Sun's corona.

Researchers have uncovered the origin and cause of an extreme space weather event that took place July 22, 2012 on the sun which generated the fastest solar wind speed ever recorded directly by a solar wind instrument.